


Like the Whisper of Wings (Sparking a Deluge)

by Adel Mortescryche (Mortescryche)



Series: Dragon Cub AU [2]
Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dragons, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Anthropomorphic, Attempt at Humor, Child Sawada Tsunayoshi, Dragons, Family, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, It features a baby dragon what did you expect, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Prequel, Shapeshifting, Team as Family, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 14:26:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15002783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mortescryche/pseuds/Adel%20Mortescryche
Summary: When Takeshi is approached by Gokudera Hayato with a dragon cub, he definitely doesn't expect how complicated his life is going to get.(Or: That one in which Takeshi helps raise a dragon!Tsuna, collides with the Tengu living higher up in the mountains, proceeds to fall for their heir, and needs to deal with his cub deciding that humans make for good company, going against anything Takeshi thought was a good idea.)---Can be read as a Standalone Oneshot.





	Like the Whisper of Wings (Sparking a Deluge)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prequel to my Dragon!Tsuna fic ["We Roar Like Giants"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14948966). It can also be read as a standalone, since it _is_ the prequel, but read that if you want to know Tsuna's side of the story set in the future!

The rustle of wings settling above him, right where the roof changes shape to accommodate the engawa appropriately, is not a surprise.

“Your dragon-cub,” murmured the voice of the man above him, tone silken and lethal, “is befriending _gaijin.”_

Takeshi laughed, even when he wanted to sigh. It earned him a foot aimed at his head, which he dodged, and he held up the pot he’d prepared beforehand for perusal.

The tengu1 paused in his attack, feathers bristling. But the smell of the tea was apparently adequately cultured enough that Kyoya was willing to let the matter go, for now. As Takeshi knew he would. For all that the Hibari was notoriously temperamental and just as liable to eviscerate you as he was to meditate over the beauty of a full moon at night, there were some things that Kyoya was _very_ predictable in. One of those was cute animals. The other, without fail, tended to be good quality tea.

Kyoya didn’t speak again until Takeshi had them both settled and had served tea for them both, politely drinking it as was expected. Takeshi waited for the verdict, but Kyoya gave a deep sigh, gently setting his cup down instead.

“By this reaction of yours, I suppose you already knew?”

“Haha, I’ve been hearing stories, about a man with gold hair and his child of mixed blood, with orange eyes and brown hair.”

Kyoya’s claws tightened on the edge of the table, scoring the wood slightly. Takeshi cleared his throat, pointed in the sound, and Kyoya subsided with a barely discernible wince.

When Kyoya didn’t immediately speak, Takeshi carefully poured himself another cup of tea, turning away from the table so he could sit with his legs dangling over the edge of the engawa, comfortable in his own space. After a long moment, the tengu drew away from the table as well, sidling closer so he could sit beside Takeshi, his wings folded politely behind him. Takeshi smiled into his cup, but he didn’t immediately say anything, knowing for a fact over their many years of acquaintance as neighbors on the same mountain that Kyoya preferred the silence to noise, especially at night.

“If he’s picked a human form, that means he’s chosen to add this human to his hoard, is it not?” Kyoya asked quietly, and Takeshi shrugged lightly, not looking over at him.

“It’s possible. It could be that it’s because he was too young when Gokudera first found him and brought him to us; Tsuna has always had a tendency to wander, it could be that he was searching for something in particular-” Takeshi broke off when Kyoya’s wings rustled again, the tengu clearly ill at ease.

“Don’t play the fool, herbivore. He _belongs_ away from the humans; that cub was always too curious for his own good. You should have kept him under firmer lock and key-” Kyoya paused when a low, throbbing growl erupted from Takeshi’s lips

Takeshi cleared his throat uncomfortably when Kyoya shot him a cool look. It was probably for the best that the Hibari had shown up with a specific topic to discuss, else that growl would have had a tonfa at Takeshi’s throat before he’d been able to complete it.

“He’s just a pup, I’d rather not think of him needing to be locked up, haha!” he said instead, smiling placidly when Kyoya’s shoulders tightened.

“And what if he brings his human to the mountain, sheep. What then.” Kyoya whispered, his claws digging into the wood of the engawa on either side of him. Takeshi glanced down at the scores being made into his home, and glanced back out towards the open ground before them.

“Well, we’ll handle it then, if we need to. From the rumors I’ve heard, for all that he’s a foreigner, the gold haired man means to stay. I don’t see why he can’t stay here.”

Kyoya abruptly stood up, his summer yukata rustling about him along with his wings. Takeshi just looked up at him, still smiling, and Kyoya _hissed,_ before taking flight without another word.

In the lingering silence after, Takeshi rubbed the back of his head with a sigh, finally letting go of his smile. Well. That could have gone worse, but he’s relieved it didn’t. He pushed himself back to his feet, and quietly began clearing the tea pot and cups that had been left behind. Kyoya would be back when he was ready, as would the cub. Takeshi would wait, in the meanwhile, as he always did, patient as the land he was born of.

*

When Hayato first brought the cub to Takeshi’s home, the nukekubi2 had seemed absolutely enchanted with him. That by itself had endeared the cub to Takeshi, who had long grown tired of Hayato’s bad nature. The other youkai had his reasons, not the least of which was his human foreigner father and an ill mother who’d died under mysterious circumstances, but the attitude grew tiring to deal with over time.

Hayato’s cheer when caring for the cub was a delight, and Takeshi found that his laughter around the cub wasn’t even remotely forced.

“It’s because the dragon-cub is _happy,”_ Hayato had remarked, smiling softly and untangling the cub’s still soft claws from the long tassels of his scarf. “Even without his parents, and no company that looks like him, he’s happy to have company at all. It’s an innocent joy, idiot-dog3 Maybe you should try that out some time.”

Takeshi had only laughed some more at that, because hearing Hayato lecturing him on the importance of _innocent joy_ had been a riot.

It had been easy welcoming the cub into his home. Even when it was a child, it was easily to tell that the dragon-cub would one day grow very large in size. Takeshi’s father had the expertize to be able to tell, with how much he’d traveled. But their ancestral property had the space to spare, without being as higher up on the mountain as the tengu lands – the air was easier to breathe, for a child.

The Hibari family had _not_ been happy, when they’d heard of the new addition to their mountain, but Takeshi and his father had always maintained good relations with their tengu neighbors, so the Head of the family was willing to let it pass, so long as the cub never strayed into their lands.

Then the cub grew strong enough to venture out on his own, and the next thing they knew, the cub had disappeared into tengu lands, curious about the upper edges of the woods that Takeshi and his dad never let him explore. And Takeshi had rushed right after him, too attached to the cub to see it killed at the hands of a vengeful tengu, of all things.

Which would be how he’d met Hibari Kyoya in real life, outside of the stories.

*

When Takeshi finally tracked the cub down, he was whining pathetically in a high pitched tone that had Takeshi’s ears pricking and a hand on his sheath because _nothing_ that made his cub wail like that should be allowed to live. A split second’s pause before he came upon the cub and the Hibari menacing it managed to give Takeshi the time to remember _not_ to draw his shapeshifting blade. Not when he and the cub were technically in the wrong.

Surprisingly enough, when he reached the tree where the cub was wailing from, climbing up revealed a tengu in his partially shifted form, clad in heavier robes for the summer and wings neatly folded behind him. One hand loosely gripped the handle of a tonfa, but the other was gently petting the soft fur that grew along the dragon-cub’s neck and back, and the tufts on the top of his head.

Now that Takeshi was close enough, he could tell that the cub _wasn’t_ whining in distress. He all but sagged in place on the branch he was perched in, heaving for breath and in relief.

The next thing he knew, there was metal against his throat, shoving him up back against the tree trunk. Takeshi didn’t hesitate to move with it, knowing that one wrong step could having him either falling out of the tree or with a broken neck because of the tonfa. When he got a clear view of the Hibari clan member facing him, the first thing he noticed was the hard gray eyes, watching him coldly.

The cub was happily curled up in Hibari’s other arm, pressed against his chest, the traitor.

“I come in peace?” Takeshi offered with an awkward grin, lifting his hands up defensively. “I’m not trespassing on purpose, honest, I was just worried about the cub.”

“The _cub,”_ Hibari murmured, voice cool, “made less of a menace of himself, simply playing in the shrubbery. You, on the other hand, dared to venture into our trees.”

Takeshi laughed wryly, tilting his head back a little. No go, the body of the tonfa simply followed him, the metal chilly against his throat.

“Does it help if I say that I was worried someone from your clan was punishing him for trespassing?” Takeshi asked, gaze not leaving Hibari’s own.

Evidently that had made the tengu’s hand pause in petting the cub’s fur, because he made a squeaky, whining noise of protest. Takeshi’s lips tilted up in a grin, in spite of himself, even when it made the tonfa dig harder into his throat.

“You. You’re one of the escorting dogs that took a dragonet in.”

“Takeshi of Clan Yamamoto,” Takeshi replied, agreeably enough, seeing as he _was_ trespassing. Steely gray eyes narrowed at him, then glanced down at the cub, staring up at both of them innocently.

“This… is a _dragonet?”_ Hibari asked incredulously, though his voice remained soft. Measured.

Takeshi laughed again, ignoring the way it made the tonfa dig into his throat.

“Yeah. We think he’s got mixed blood of some sort. The nukekubi that brought him to us for safekeeping said he stole the dragon from foreigners who planned to make a pet of it.”

“Feathered wings and these hindquarters remind me of a cat, though its skin is still mostly hide…” Hibari said lowly. “What manner of breeding made this child.”

“Beats me,” Takeshi cut in, smiling. “All I know is that he’s adorable, and loves beef, and playing in the sunlight. And he loves the sky at dawn.”

Hibari stared at him steadily for a long moment, through which Takeshi continued to smile winningly, before finally dropping his arm with an aggrieved sigh, making Takeshi sag against the truck, trying not to laugh in relief. The next thing he knew, he had an armful of dragon cub, squeaking plaintively and trying to get back to Hibari. Takeshi petted him comfortingly, transferring him to his shoulder, and directing a cautious look Hibari’s way.

“You sure this is okay? We _are_ trespassing, like you said. You’d be well within your rights to punish us.”

Hibari rolled his eyes and glanced away, apparently already bored of them.

“Possibly. But the only trouble I see here is a pair of herbivores making noise, which I will have corrected when you leave. I am Kyoya of Clan Hibari; watch the cub. I will return to look in on it.” And with that, Hibari disappeared with a beat of his wings, moving almost too fast for Takeshi to see.

“We dodged an arrow there, pup,” Takeshi murmured to the cub, tucking it safely close to him while rushing for the ground and then away from these lands high up on the mountain. Even the trees could tell that he was unwelcome in the lands of the Hibari; the very air felt threatening if he waited in one place for too long.

The cub simply snuffled in his robes, looking for a place to duck its little head. Takeshi laughed, and pressed a hand to its nape comfortingly, making sure to watch where he was going all the while.

*

The day the cub finally draws his human up the mountain to Takeshi’s home, it’s more anticlimactic than he expected it to be. For one thing, the human has wide eyes and an excited smile that remind him almost sickeningly of the cub. For another, the cub is clinging to the human’s hakama and looks just as human as he does, if it weren’t for the wide orange eyes he was sporting.

“We,” Takeshi told him mildly, “Have a lot to talk about. Later.”

The cub made a crooning noise at him, smiling artlessly, and Takeshi’s heart filled with about as much dumb love as the cub usually engendered in him. It was in no way lessened by the way the _gaijin_ spun around to stare up at him with eyes that were surprisingly just as orange as the cub’s.

“Ah! Sorry for intruding, Tsuna led me up here, I didn’t realize that this was his home!” he explained hurriedly in rough-spoken Japanese, still clearly new to the language.  The fact that he was explaining himself at all meant he could actually _see_ Takeshi. In his shifted form, not the dog or wolf he usually appeared as to humans.

The cub’s human had to be _interesting,_ didn’t he.

“Tsuna?” Takeshi asked, curious in spite of himself. And not taking a single step down the stairs, instead standing and watching carefully to see if the human would walk any closer.

“Ah, he told me he didn’t have a name other than ‘cub’, so I named him Tsunayoshi, Tsuna for short. I hope that isn’t too much of an inconvenience?”

The man _did_ take a step closer, but he paused immediately when Tsuna tugged on his hakama. Takeshi’s lip curled up slightly over his canines; the cub wasn’t watching the human, he was watching _Takeshi._

“Giotto’s a good man,” the cub said suddenly. “He just wants a place to rest. He wants _peace.”_

“Does he now,” Takeshi responded, smiling sharply, a little stung in spite of himself over the mistrust. Not that it was misplaced – Takeshi might have found himself attacking an unwary human whether or not he wanted to, after all. Some instincts ran deep.

“I told him Takeshi was a good person to talk to,” Tsuna said, peering up at him beseechingly. “Takeshi has good ideas, and always smiles! I didn’t know whom else to bring Giotto to. He has people searching for him and he doesn’t want to go back.”

Takeshi blinked slowly, and glanced back at the golden haired man – Giotto. Giotto just smiled up at him awkwardly, but Takeshi could read a man’s character simply from the set of his shoulders and the unbending nature of his spine. Takeshi _knew_ humans in a way humans simply couldn’t understand each other, and this specific human was of a rare breed.

He laughed out loud, abruptly amused.

“Haha, my cub has brought home a _king._ I thought it was normal for children to bring home dead animals and insects at trophies to begin with, I’m not sure what to do with _you,_ human.”

Giotto went still, hands suddenly flaring orange as if in shock or warning, but he subsided when Tsuna growled up at him chidingly. The sound was adorable enough that Takeshi was tempted to end the impasse just so he could walk down the stairs and sweep the cub into a hug.

“I ask for shelter, for a couple nights at best, maybe a few more at worst,” Giotto asked him, serious, and Takeshi smiled, settling his weight back on his heels.

“Now we’re talking. You’re welcome in my home, human, if only because you walk beneath my roof as a friend of my ward. But I make no promises about the rest of the mountain; the cub and I have territorial neighbors, after all.”

“ _Thank you,”_ Giotto breathed, relieved, and made it a point to stay in place until the cub led him up the stairs.

*

“I,” hissed Kyoya later in the night, looming over Takeshi’s window sill more like a vulture than a crow, “have no idea what you think you’re doing, dog, but you will teach the dragon-cub to come to heel _or I will.”_

“Haha, the human’s just looking for a bit of shelter, Kyoya, no harm or foul,” Takeshi responded, pausing for a moment by his door before stepping the rest of the way in, sliding it shut. The cub and Giotto had both retired for the night, after all. And Takeshi was free to entertain other guests without having to think about them.

“And what if more humans come? Is this mountain to become a sanctuary to their kind now?” Kyoya demanded, and Takeshi paused in the process of unrolling his futon.

“No. _Never._ I would never do that, Hibari, of course not. My clan guards this mountain, same as yours, I wouldn’t shirk that duty just because the cub’s distracted by pretty things.” Takeshi protested, and the tengu made a clicking noise from deep in his throat.

“ _Pretty,_ is he?” Kyoya breathed, stepping all the way into the room, and Takeshi felt his throat go dry.

“In the way most transient things are, yes,” he husked, dropping the futon and turning to meet the Hibari fully when Kyoya reached out to press a hand to his neck, right where it met his shoulder.

“Pretty enough to distract you as well?” Kyoya asked him, head tilted to the side curiously, his eyes as blank and hungry as the void, as always, and Takeshi barked out a laugh.

“Definitely not.” _Not anywhere as pretty and distracting as you, anyway,_ he thought, and didn’t dare to complete the words out loud. Not when Kyoya’s claws were close enough to rip his throat and face open.

“Hm,” Kyoya murmured thoughtfully. “Clearly distracting enough for the dragon-cub. Perhaps it’s something in the blood. Dragons do tend to hoard strange things, and the child is at the age.”

“Mmn,” Takeshi murmured back, and turned his face into the open palm at his neck, pressing his lips to it leadingly without taking his eyes off of the tengu.

Kyoya smiled slowly, clearly charmed against his will.

“Stay the night?” Takeshi offered quietly. “You could take the human to task come morning. I _did_ warn him that he had other neighbors to contend with.”

Kyoya turned the thought over slowly in his head, clearly considering it, before tilting his head forward in the slightest of nods.

“The thought amuses me. Yes.” He said, and Takeshi grinned hungrily against his hand.

*

It was odd, how easy it was to fall into something of a routine. Takeshi’s dad shook his head and laughed over it, saying Takeshi had gone _bird crazy,_ but Takeshi swore it wasn’t anything of the sort.

It was just that the higher mountains were wilder, more untamed, and therefore better ground to train the dragon-cub in. The cub grew more each day; Takeshi had caught it rubbing its head and skin against trees to ease the itching that its newly growing horns and spines were causing it. The cub was even beginning to make sounds that almost reminded Takeshi of _words,_ and he suspected the day the cub would become fully sapient in all the ways that mattered weren’t far. It clearly thought and acted for itself, now all that was left for it to speak its mind, and Takeshi would no longer have just a cub on his hands, no, he would have a cub shaped _person._

It was only fair, then, that he had aid in tending to the newly forming cub shaped person. And Kyoya of the Hibari Clan was proving to be the best sort of company possible, almost moreso than poor Hayato.

Kyoya, after all, wasn’t swayed by the cub’s wide orange eyes and coy smiles. Hayato gave in every damn time, unable to help himself when the cub truly wished for anything. He’d been flooding Takeshi’s home with junk over the cub’s whims and Takeshi couldn’t even find it in himself to be angry, not when it was so _funny._ Hayato, a particularly murderous nukekubi, terror of the human settlement at the base of the mountain turned mother hen over a _dragon cub._

“Fitting,” muttered Kyoya, gently running his fingers through the cub’s hair, claws grooming almost absentmindedly, “that that outlier is brought to heel because of a cub.”

“Haha, Hayato’s hardly an _outlier._ He’d been living here for more than a human generation at this point, cut him some slack, will you,” Takeshi laughed, and tilted himself out of the way of the tonfa that was aimed at his face.

“As if _human_ generations are something to judge by,” Kyoya scoffed. “that boy will be an outlier until he learns better manners. Preying on humans without any reason because of malice and hunger tempt me to take him down, if only to preserve some decorum on the mountain.”

“He can’t help what he is,” Takeshi countered mildly. “His mother contracted the sickness in her village and passed it on. He’s better now.”

Kyoya rolled his eyes, and shot Takeshi a narrow eyed look. Coupled with the cub on his lap, the image Kyoya made was adorable enough that Takeshi was hard pressed not to laugh.

“ _You_ need to learn better manners too, dog,” Kyoyo said snidely, and Takeshi did laugh this time unable to help himself.

“Is it wolf, or sheep or dog, crow, you never seem to be able to make up your mind.” Takeshi asked, grinning widely, his mouth full of sharp teeth, and Kyoya stared back at him, eyes hungry and wide, going still on the branch beside Takeshi for a whole second before resuming grooming the cub’s fur.

The cub made a questioning purr, ruffling it’s still small golden wings softly, and Takeshi reached out to brush a finger across the feathers gently. Kyoya’s fingers paused when Takeshi’s grew close to his, but Takeshi paid him no mind, leaning down to smile at the cub, who was wriggling his nose cutely up at Takeshi.

“I must be some mix of all three, hm, cub?” Takeshi asked the cub teasingly. “At least the sheep would make me a herbivore by design.”

When he glanced up, Kyoya was staring at him again, eyes as pale as the half-light of dawn, and Takeshi couldn’t help himself. He reached right across to touch, leaned in to press his lips and tongue to the tengu’s because, really, Kyoya looked good enough to _eat._

He got a tonfa to the face for his troubles, and this time it actually hit.

*

“Be direct with me, cub, you want this man to stay for longer than a few days, don’t you.” Takeshi asked Tsuna quietly.

The name, for all that it was relatively new, stuck to the cub like a burr. Takeshi might have called it unwanted, but Tsuna seemed rather clear that he treasured the gift that Giotto had bestowed on him. Tsuna, for his part, simply looked up at him seriously, demeanor shy for all that his gaze was steady.

“I want to stay with him,” Tsuna said, soft. “You and Kyoya and Hayato are my hoard, too, but Giotto is small and weak and could die so much easier than all of you.”

“It’s in the nature of humans to be transient,” Takeshi replied, instead of pointing out that the cub was much smaller and weaker than Giotto in the now. It wouldn’t be true for much longer, after all. And some day, Tsuna would be larger and mightier than even Takeshi and Kyoya, possibly more dangerous than Hayato too. “It wouldn’t do you any good to get attached to him.”

“But he’s small, and weak, and _mine,”_ Tsuna said plaintively. “I don’t have any others like him, and I would like to keep him, even if it’s only for a while.”

Takeshi ended up laughing, if a little helplessly. There wasn’t much he could say in the face of that. Kyoya had been right all along, after all, there was no telling a dragon to change its mind about its hoard. Even a sapient dragon. You could sooner convince the wind to turn and blow in the opposite direction from which they willed.

“Okay. Okay, Tsuna, if you’re sure.”

They were interrupted by the sound of explosions going off in the inner gardens of the house, and Takeshi sighed, smiling in spite of himself.

“We’d best go rescue your small and weak human from Kyoya first, haha! Coming?”

“Un!” Tsuna declared smiling sweetly up at him, and pressing a small clawed hand into his own.

They walked together back into the house, leaving the doors open behind them.

They only paused to laugh when Giotto ran past them looking thoroughly frazzled with his head on fire, hands filled with dancing orange flames, while Kyoya followed close behind, his tonfa wreathed in purple flames.

**Author's Note:**

> 1: http://yokai.com/daitengu/
> 
> 2: http://yokai.com/nukekubi/
> 
> 3: I couldn’t exactly go with ‘yakyu-baka/baseball-idiot’ when this is a period fic. So, I’m sticking to idiot-dog, because Takeshi’s a yama inu or okuri-okami4. The other options had been yama-baka or wolf-idiot
> 
> 4: http://yokai.com/okuriinu/
> 
> \---
> 
> Hi there! This is my Day Five | Rain Day entry for KHR Rare Pair Week, and is also the prequel to Day Two | Sky Day's entry. *grins* I think I'm rather fond of this 'verse, here's hoping I get to add more to it. Depending on the response, of course.
> 
> **Kudos and Comments are very welcome!** I'm still catching up to my responses, but I'd love to hear what you have to say! What did you think about the youkai varieties I went with for the characters; do you think they suit them? How was my take on Takeshi and Kyoya? Did you enjoy their interaction? And, wasn't dragon!Tsuna adorable? 
> 
> \---
> 
> For anyone interested, the next new AO3 post from me will be: Day Six | Cloud Day's submission for KHR Rare Pair Week. With hope I'll be able to complete it in time; that's also 8018 | Yamamoto/Hibari and is gearing up to be a monster of a oneshot. It's currently at 12960 words.
> 
> You can find me **[@adelmortescryche](https://adelmortescryche.tumblr.com)** \- come by and say hi! I don't bite.


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